David Tress
Born London, 1955
David Tress studied Fine Art at the Harrow College of Art and Trent Bridge Polytechnic, Nottingham. In 1976 he moved to Pembrokeshire and has lived there ever since, the landscape of West Wales forming an integral focus of his landscape paintings and drawings throughout his career. He taught History of Art at the University College of Wales Aberystwyth until the 1990s and has served as a member of the Welsh Arts Council. He has exhibited in Wales, England, Ireland, France, Holland and America and has works in public collections including: The National Museum of Wales, The Contemporary Art Society for Wales, The National Library of Wales, MOMA Wales, The Guildhall Art Gallery City of London, and Pallant House Gallery Chichester.
David is widely regarded as one of Britain’s most inventive landscape painters, capturing an essence that goes further than the landscape’s immediate appearance and qualities, but digging deeper in its relationship to the self, history and context, seasons and elements. They are situated in a place between observational work and abstraction. Elements of the landscape are captured, as well as places and points of natural, geographic and historic interest that David has revisited throughout his career: his home of Wales, the West Country, the Lake District and the west coast of Scotland.
Many of Tress’s paintings are sculptural- build up through layers of ripped and layered handmade papers and expressionistic, exuberant applications of paint. Paint is scraped, scored, layered, ripped through paper- referencing elemental changes and processes to the natural landscape through process.
David Boyd Haycock,
‘David Tress tears apart the British landscape, almost forces his way into it. His extraordinary paintings and drawings are like pages ripped from the places he has visited: like turfs dug from a field or a hillside, at times they are almost three dimensional in their form. He is no passive bystander; he is artist, archaeologist and visionary rolled into one.’
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2021
‘North. South. East. West’ mixed show, Beaux Arts Bath
2020
Solo Summer Show, Beaux Arts Bath
2019
‘Where Light Chases Shadow’, Group show of landscape paintings, Beaux Arts Bath
2002-2018
‘New Paintings’, Beaux Arts Bath
2011-2016
Messums, London
2008-2010
Chasing Sublime Light Touring Exhibition, Arts Council of Wales
1995-2011
Boundary Gallery London
1984 – 2011
West Wales Arts Centre Fishguard
1993-2011
Albany Gallery Cardiff
2010
Victoria Gallery Bath
2006
Critic’s Choice, the Art Shop, Abergavenny
Landscapes of Wales, National Botanic Gardens of Wales
2005
The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries London
Denbighshire Arts Travelling Exhibition
Drawings Travelling Exhibition incl. National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, Guildhall Gallery, London
2004
Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, Guildhall Gallery, London
Farming and the Welsh Landscape, the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society
2003
Museum of Modern Art, Wales
Hereford City Art Gallery
2001
Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, Llanbedrog, Gwynedd
Museum of Modern Art, Wales
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea
2000
Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford, Republic of Ireland
1999
British Library, London
Mountain, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
1998
Landmarks, National Museum of Wales
Invited Artist, Eigse Carlow Arts Festival, Republic of Ireland
1993
Five Artists from Wales, Eleonore Austerer Gallery, San Francisco
COLLECTIONS
The National Library of Wales
National Museums and Galleries of Wales
The Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
Clare Hall, Cambridge
The Museum of Modern Art, Wales
The Contemporary Art Society for Wales
Pembrokeshire Museums
Ceridigion Museum
AWARDS
Welsh Artist of the Year Drawing Award (2006)
The Discerning Eye Regional Prize for Wales (2003)
Wakelin Award (2001)
W C W James Lauditory Award (1999)
D & AD ‘Yellow Pencil’ award for Millennium Stamp (1999)
Selected Press
The Spectator (18 Nov 2006)
The Times (2 Feb. 2005)
The Spectator (22 Jan 2005)
The Times (3 Dec 2003)
The New Welsh Review (Spring 2003)
BBC Radio Wales (‘First Hand’ 9 July 2002)
HTV (‘River Patrol’ 21 August 2000)